Warcraft III: Reforged

Reforged retains the gameplay of the original, but its development has spurred on further balance changes to the game's multiplayer. Players from the original client are able to access and play with Reforged players by being given access to the new client (after they have purchased the product). There is a Classic Graphics setting available without purchase for those owning a classic license. Similar to StarCraft: Remastered, it uses the textures of the original release.[4] Users can unlock profile icons based on per-race ratings.

The campaign's missions were visually updated to reflect World of Warcraft, however, the map of Azeroth and heroes' appearances were still kept closer to the original WarCraft III concepts than to those appearing in WoW.[3] Moreover, there are certain features missing from Reforged, such as the competitive ladder, classic animated backgrounds and replay saving option. Some of them are expected to be added with the upcoming patches.[5] Some, however, have not been included, including the "Clans" social system, and has not been mentioned by Blizzard.[6]

The campaign now has three difficulty settings, one of them is the "story mode" aimed at newcomers. The "hard mode" setting prevents the player from using cheat codes.[7]

WarCraft III: Reforged has the same plot as the original game, but possesses minor visual and stylistic changes.[3]

Blizzard intended, along with a desire from the playerbase, to develop StarCraft: Remastered as a generally pure remake. In contrast, Warcraft III: Reforged was intended to be less pure. Producer Pete Stillwell said that "When we went to Korea [for StarCraft: Remastered] and talked with pros and people still playing in game rooms, the overwhelming feedback was 'Please don’t change the game,'" Stillwell said. "'Make it pretty, give us a modern matchmaker and then quietly step away, Blizzard.' Getting those marching orders made the endeavor not just easier but more focused. But with Warcraft 3: Reforged, we've talked with the communities in Europe and in China [who say], 'Hey, we don't think this game is done' -- The goal is not just to give Warcraft III a new coat of paint, but "do more with it."[2] Lemon Sky Studios partnered with Blizzard to provide most of the remastered 3D art assets.[8]

At BlizzCon 2018 on November 2, 2018, Blizzard Entertainment announced Warcraft III: Reforged featuring remodeled characters and graphics with a prospective release in 2019.[12] After Reforged's reveal, the game's first balance changes in years were announced. During Blizzcon 2019, the beta for the game began.[13] This beta was restricted to those who pre-ordered the game.

Reforged was originally slated to be released in 2019, however, on December 17, 2019, Blizzard announced that the release would be delayed until January 28, 2020, stating that "as we started approaching the finish line, we felt we'd need a little extra development time for finishing touches".[14]

Warcraft III: Reforged received "mixed or average" reviews according to Metacritic.[15] PC Gamer's Fraser Brown concluded that Reforged was still an exceptional game at its core but was plagued by bugs, a lack of features and poor design choices such as the "massive" user interface.[16] German magazine GameStar opined that the remaster was still a good game in regards to its single-player, despite it not including the promised changes and additions, but its multiplayer features were now either worse than before or non-existent. They also compared the game to 1999's Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, which was also criticized at release for lacking promised features.[17]

Player response was overwhelmingly negative.[18][19] On release, the game was review-bombed by users on Metacritic, reaching a low score of 0.5/10 a few days after release based on over 14,000 reviews, making it the lowest-ranked game on the site by user score before being surpassed by Madden NFL 21. Many criticized the remaster for its absence of features promised by Blizzard at launch, technical issues, changes to the original game's user interface among other gameplay features, and graphical changes which some felt had either not been improved enough or looked worse. Blizzard was also criticized for their decision that, due to it sharing Reforged's client, all existing copies of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos were required to update to a newer version, which meant that many of the gameplay changes to Reforged were now mandatory in the original. Additionally, there were complaints towards Blizzard's announcement that they would claim ownership over all user-created content in Reforged.[20][21][22][23][24] In response to the overwhelmingly negative reactions from the players, Blizzard revealed plans of progressively releasing updates that would significantly improve the game in the long run, similarly to World of Warcraft Classic.[25]

On February 3, 2020, Polygon reported that Blizzard is offering full refunds for all players on request regardless of playtime.[26] The next day, Blizzard announced that some technical issues and missing features will be addressed with future patches but defended their decision not to include the cutscenes showcased at BlizzCon 2018 with their wish to preserve the spirit of the original.[27]